Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Archie Meets the Ramones #1 (One-shot)

   Sometimes you spot a comic book and say to yourself, "No way."

   That was my reaction when I saw the cover of Archie Meets the Ramones.

   Having a meeting between the clean-cut kids from Riverdale and the punk rock icons has to be an inspired bit of lunacy.

   It's a trick for the two bands to meet, of course, considering that four Ramone "brothers" all had passed away by 2014.

   But the two collide thanks to a bit of magical intervention, and the story actually manages to be a bit of fun.

   It offers up the Ramones as a new inspiration for Archie and his friends (if somewhat inadvertently), and the story is something of a primer for the rock scene in the '70s.

   The story by Alex Segura and Matthew Rosenberg is a love letter to the Ramones, as today's readers learn about the classic band along with the (mostly clueless) Archies.

   The art by Gisele Lagace is crisp and expressive - not as grubby as you might expect for a rock band, but still lots of fun.

   And that's the goal here - to have fun with the meeting of opposites on the bandwidth of musical talents, as we see the contrast between one of the all-time great rock bands (though one that never enjoyed huge success on the charts) and a made-up band that somehow churned out one of the biggest hits of all time - despite the fact that they really didn't exist at all.

   (And thankfully, there's no mention of that song - "Sugar, Sugar.")

 Grade: A-

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3 comments:

Kevin Findley said...

Don't knock "Sugar, Sugar" Chuck. I remember cutting out the cardboard .45 from the back of a box of Honeycombs. Probably the best work I ever did with a pair of scissors. HA!

Chuck said...

Kevin, I didn't mean t knock "Sugar, Sugar" - I was a fan when it was released. I was just dreading the scene I expected in the comic, when the Archies played their biggest hit for the Ramones. The reaction would have been terrifying. Thankfully, it didn't happen.

Kevin Findley said...

Ah! Yeah, the Ramones would have had no choice but to give the Archies a swirly if that had happened.